Despite losing a fortune, Zhang Yimming remains the world’s second-richest tycoon under 40.
Zhang Yiming, the founder of TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, saw his personal fortune plummet by $17 billion last year, according to data published in China on Thursday. The reasons for the tycoon’s losses are unknown, but Zhang remains the world’s second-richest businessman under the age of 40, with wealth valued at $37 billion, according to statistics released by Chinese firm Hurun.
In front of him is Mark Zuckerberg, head of the American technology giant Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, whose fortune was estimated by Hurun at 68,000 million dollars. According to this classification, Zuckerberg also lost a fortune estimated at 8,000 million dollars last year.
The Battle of ByteDance
Zhang co-founded ByteDance in Beijing in 2012 but resigned from the group in 2021 amid regulatory tightening of China’s tech industry. Zhang, a Chinese national, now resides in Singapore. ByteDance’s success in China’s highly competitive internet sector is due in large part to its popular Douyin short video app.
The app is the world’s most valuable start-up, with a market capitalization of $200 billion, according to Hurun. Its international version, TikTok, is hugely popular among teens around the world, but some of its aspects raise national security concerns in many countries. Critics say TikTok allows Chinese authorities to access global user data, allegations the company has vehemently denied.
Still, the US, Canadian, British and Australian governments, as well as the European Commission, recently banned their officials from installing TikTok on work phones. Washington threatened an outright ban on TikTok, and the platform’s head, Shou Zi Chew, was summoned to appear in the US Congress to defend it.
On Tuesday, British authorities imposed a fine of 15.8 billion dollars on TikTok for anomalies in the use of personal data of minors.
